


Memento Mori

by misanthropyray



Series: Innocent Smile [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Drug Addiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-06
Updated: 2011-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropyray/pseuds/misanthropyray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all but those people weren't Sherlock Holmes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Mori

The momentary spike of pain sparks a chain reaction through my veins, as though the casing of the syringe has shattered and is sending crushed glass rushing into my blood stream, ripping through my insides. The burn starts in my arm and spreads until it’s an all encompassing fireball of pain, but in its wake lies the most blissful serenity. I feel as though a blanket of the softest fur is wrapping itself around me, inside and out. As the seconds tick by, my brain and all the screaming nightmares within it seem to grow quieter and further away.

I can’t stand them to be any closer than this. If my thoughts became audible to my own ears, I’d have to listen to them and I could not bear it.

No, I’m not ready to accept that yet; I can’t see a time when I will be ready to accept that. I think I’ll just stay here instead, lying in my bed, staring at the poorly plastered ceiling with my precious supply of morphine by my side.

Each new wave that I pump into my arm grounds me, keeps me safe and keeps me alive. I look forward to the pain as much as the pleasure because it reminds me that I’m still here, for better or worse.

  
\----

  
It’s his birthday today. He’ll be home from his afternoon seminars any moment so I have to make sure everything is perfect. Because that’s what people do, isn’t it? See? I’m finally learning.

I’ve cleaned the flat (well, in a manner of speaking. I tidied some papers and things away, then paid the cleaner for a few additional hours but however you look at it, my actions caused the flat to be clean, ergo I cleaned it.) I booked a table at our favourite restaurant. Mummy has sent an enormous bouquet of flowers which is currently dominating most of the kitchen table, a mass of white and green scattered with flashes of deep purple.

I can hear the key turning in the lock before the front door swings forth as Victor bustles himself inside, his blonde hair a wild mess around his face. He drops his book bags into a heap by the door and leans back on it with a deep exhale and a smile.

Sometimes it frustrates me that I can no longer see him objectively. I know for a fact that he is physically beautiful because I used to look at him and bask in his beauty and since then, nothing has significantly altered. This doesn’t mean my thoughts about his appearance have changed, it’s just that when I look at him now, I see everything. I can see the time when I caught a particularly unpleasant flu virus and he spent the whole night wrapped in a duvet with me on the bathroom floor. I can see the look in his eye when he defends me from anyone I may (accidentally, you understand) insult who decides to lash out. I can see with perfect clarity, the moment he opened the Cambridge acceptance letter and his whole face shone with unabashed delight.

I see the whole perfect being, a stream of past events synchronised and repeating in unison, and it can’t be separated from the outside anymore. That doesn’t make him any less perfect though. If anything, it makes him more so.

I move over to him, still propped against the door, and press my mouth against his. He releases a tuneful sigh and I can feel him smiling against me as I lick my tongue across his lips and wrap both arms around his waist. He snakes his hands up my arms before leaving them to rest on my shoulders as he pulls back from the kiss. He looks at me with a familiar glint in his eye and does a preparatory half jump before launching himself against me and wrapping his legs around my hips. With a laugh, he buries his face into my neck and starts kissing his way up to my ear.

“Happy birthday. I missed you, you know?” I said whilst moving the both of us towards the sofa. He lifts his head to rest his forehead against mine, totally obscuring my vision but filling it with something much lovelier than our little flat.

“I’ve only been gone -” looking at his watch over my shoulder, “about four hours.”

“Exactly. It’s been hellish.”

“I’m so sorry. I promise I won’t ever let it happen again. Not until tomorrow, anyway.”

I finally reach the couch and ease down into it, Victor adjusting his position so his legs rest on either side of my thighs. He notices the flowers on the kitchen table behind my head, “Wow, who sent the forest?” he says with the kind of child-like wonder I’ve always envied.

“They’re your present from Mummy. I think she took the Chelsea Flower Show a tad too seriously this year.”

He lifts himself off me and jumps over the back of the sofa, sticking his face into the foliage and inhaling their scent for a few moments. “I should call and thank her; I think they’re the prettiest flowers I’ve ever seen.”

“No, not now. Come back.” And with that, he leaps over the back of the sofa and lowers himself back into my lap, sharing his warmth with me. “Now, where were we?”

“Well, I think you were saying Happy Birthday,” he says whilst running his fingers up my neck, over my ears and into my hair and back down again. How distracting.

“Ahh, that’s right. Your present...”

Wrapping an arm around his waist, I lean over to reach an envelope resting on the coffee table, rolling him backwards and pressing our bodies together in the process.

The thick envelope is cream with rough cut edges and the random bumps and threads that mark it as handmade. I hand it to him and he hesitates for a moment. He begins to run his fingertips over the edges of it, turning it over in his hands and smiling.

“It’s handmade. Probably in the Wiltshire area, or possible Buckinghamshire. It was written by a male in his late teens or early twenties, who I think is devastatingly handsome. See, I can tell by the dip in this V...”

“Stop mocking me and open it.”

And with that, his fingers began tearing at the paper and diving to get inside. He pulls out the card with a flash of white paper sticking out of it and cradles it carefully, opening it slowly to keep the contents from dropping onto my lap. As he reads the card in silence, the smile melts from his face. “No no no, this... this is too much.”

“You don’t like it?” It was supposed to be perfect, the present, the day, everything was supposed to be perfect and now my own stupid error has ruined it. I watch as his jaw goes slack whilst he reads and rereads the writing in front of him.

“Don’t like it?” He gasps, looking up at me finally, “No! It’s not that. It’s just too much, I don’t know if I can accept it.” He sorts through the bits of paper in the card and fans them out in his hands, touching them to make sure he isn’t imagining it.

“You’re accepting it because I am not giving you a choice in the matter. We fly to Argentina next week. We’re staying at the Palacio Duhau in Buenos Aires where you’ll be schooled in the finer points of polo by some of the best players in the world, whilst I explore their science and forensics museum.”

“You impossibly brilliant man.” He puts down the papers and pins me to the back of the sofa with his strong hands, planting kisses over my face, each punctuated with the liberation of a shirt button from its accompanying hole. “You.” “Are.” “The.” “Most.” “Perfect.” “Creature.” “I.” “Have. “Ever.” “Met.”

When he runs out of my shirt buttons, he starts unbuttoning his own and soon we’re pressed chest to chest, frotting against each other. I smooth my hands over the soft skin of his back and across his buttocks, wedging them under his thighs and lifting him as I stand; Victor lets out a surprised little squeak but, wrapping his legs around my torso, doesn’t stop his oral examination of my shoulder and collar bone.

I blindly walk us into the bedroom, stopping when I can feel the softness of the duvet cushioning against my legs, where I can safely guide Victor down onto the bed. He squirms around quickly, pulling at my belt but I grab at his wrists to stop him. “It’s not my birthday.”

He’s pliant in my hands and looks up at me through sandy lashes with a smile. I let go of his wrists and slide off my trousers before dropping to my knees and working on removing his. He raises his hips in compliance and I pull the material down over them, throwing them across the room with a dramatic flourish.

We’ve been together for nearly two years now and this has become a well choreographed dance which is always morphing and evolving. Our first time together, we were both innocents, exploring each others’ bodies and testing boundaries and sensations. Now, I know the responses of his body as well as I can predict my own.

I start at his feet and work my way up, touching and tasting him in reverent worship. When I reach his mouth, we kiss and he pulls me onto the bed to lie on top of him where my body rises and falls with the laboured motion of his lungs. I brush the damp hair away from his forehead and press my lips against the moistened skin there. His hips push up into mine, evidently becoming impatient with the elongated preamble.

I take both of our aching cocks into my hand move them together, keeping the pace leisurely. He lets out a heavy breath at the sensation and I grind my hips into his in response.

“Tell me how you want this to end.” I whisper into his ear, but with a voice much lower than I’d intended it to be, coming out as more of a growl than a sentence.

“With you inside me.”

And who am I to argue with that?

I reach over to the bedside table for the tube of lubricant stashed in the drawer, smearing some over my fingers. I part his cheeks and circle round the puckering of skin, applying fractionally more pressure with each revolution until his body yields to me and lets me inside. I tease him, pushing in up to the first knuckle and retreating before he lets out a frustrated cry and bucks his hips backwards onto my hand. He lets out a guttural groan, trying to take matters into his own hands and rising his hips up to repeat the motion. I pull my hand back and line up a second digit alongside the first which surprises him when he pushes back onto me.

I still his hips and gently thrust into him with my fingers, relaxing and easing him open. I trace my initials over the peachy softness of his prostate and he writhes beneath me, a jolt travelling up his spine until he’s thrashing his head against the duvet and bunching his hands into the bed linen.

There’s a limit to the visual stimuli I can comfortably withstand, and this tips it over the edge. I wipe the remaining lubricant onto myself and shift up the bed to align our bodies. Victor is sprawled out across the bed, looking like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, panting and biting down on his bottom lip in expectation. I ease myself inside him, bottoming out with a guttural grunt, and stopping to let him adjust around my length. It’s not an entirely charitable move though, as I need a moment to regroup and get myself under control; today isn’t about me.

Lifting his leg to rest on my shoulder, I pull out a fraction before thrusting back inside him, gradually picking up speed and adjusting my entry angle whilst monitoring his reactions.  
“Sherlock, please, oh God, Sherlock.” His words are dissolving and becoming less well defined as I bring us closer and closer to the climax.

Shudders of energy ripple outwards down his limbs and I take hold of his cock, bringing him to the edge and falling over it with him, pressing as much of my skin against his as I can.

We mutely stare at each other for a few moments and he brushes the hair out of my eyes before pulling me in for a kiss. “Time for a shower, we’re going out for dinner.”

“Sherlock, if I’m being forced to accept the trip, there’s no way I’m letting you take me to dinner too.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that then; it’s your gift from Mycroft.”

“And is he...”

“No, to everyone’s emphatic relief, he will not be attending. Besides, I have no desire to share you.”

He smiles and crushes his face into the duvet whilst I get up to turn the shower on for the both of us. Before I’ve managed to leave the room, I hear his muffled words behind me, “My legs aren’t working yet. Come lie with me.”

And so I do, limbs entwined, blurring the distinction between two separate individuals; brain and heart, combined as one. Lying together, forever.

  
\----

  
I feel as though I’m being dragged from the darkness by thousands of sharpened, icy fingers covering my entire body, scratching and gouging and pulling me back to consciousness. When my eyes flutter open, they feel sticky and thick and the world is blurry around me as I blink away the translucent film that obscures my vision. The room comes into focus but I can’t take anything in, because at that moment, my body becomes aware of a blinding, all encompassing pain that starts inside my right leg and radiates outwards.

I let out a cry and suddenly there are faces crowding my vision, talking to me, at me, and I don’t really understand what they’re saying.

There’s a new sensation added to the panoply of pain. It isn’t dull and fierce like the old pain though, this is hot and burning and it spreads through my system in an instant, fighting fire with fire until the flames subside and I feel like I’m melting into the bedding beneath me with relief.

It’s then that I can finally begin to look at my surrounds with any sort of clarity. Everything is white (or white washed, at least) and there’s medical equipment surrounding my bed; a hospital then. Mycroft is squeezed into an uncomfortable looking chair in the corner and when he sees me noticing him, he dislodges himself and comes to my bedside.

“Mycroft, why am I--” my words are sluggish and feel difficult in my mouth but I don’t need to finish the sentence. The gaps in my memory are filled by a wave of unwanted information, flooding back into my head. It’s too much and, for a moment, I think I’m going to vomit. “Where is he? I need to see him.” And it’s true, I do _need_ to see him. Need is burning through my veins along with the injected chemicals. He always says he’ll be there for me when I’m in pain, but he isn’t, which can only mean one thing: he’s in more pain than I am. So I need to see him, to be by his side, to entwine with him.

I try to move in the bed, gripping onto the IV in my arm and fully intending to rip it out and walk the halls until I find his room when Mycroft’s hand swoops in to stop me. “Sherlock, look!” he says resting a hand on the cast that is encasing my leg which, somehow, I had failed to notice. Admittedly, this could cause some problems to my plan.

“Sherlock, your femur was shattered in the accident. You’ve broken your pelvis in two places and your spinal column seems to be mildly inflamed. You can’t move.”

I concentrate, getting my thoughts to form words. “I need to see him.” In that moment, Mycroft looks strange to me. I can’t tell if it’s the morphine swimming in my brain or if he genuinely does look sad although I’m tempted to assume the former; I’m certain Mycroft is incapable of experiencing such a thing as sadness.

“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. I’m sorry, Sherlock. You’ve been unconscious for nearly two weeks now.” He’s avoiding making eye contact with me and I’m so confused, my brain won’t function however much I try to fight it. “Victor... He didn’t make it.”

I don’t understand what he’s saying. I can’t understand what he’s saying.

My face is wet before his piercing words have been properly decoded in my head. I’m empty. I can’t feel anything now. It’s not as though I’m floating or weightless, but more that I’ve stopped existing entirely. I’m vaguely aware that Mycroft has begun speaking again, but I can’t hear the words, let alone interpret meaning from them.

“Sherlock, do you understand? Sherlock? Say something. Please.”

I can’t stand this. I need to be alert and I need to understand what’s happening but I’m being weighted by chemicals, my brain is stuck at the bottom of the ocean. I’m sure the pain was better than this. I miss the pain now.

“I need to see him.”

“Sherlock, as I said, you’ve been unconscious for two weeks. They didn’t know when and if you were going to wake up.”  
 _  
“I need to see him.”  
_  
“That’s what I’m saying. You can’t see him. The funeral was three days ago. I’m so sorry.”

And what can I say to that? I can’t say anything because there are no words. anymore.

  
\-----

  
Without opening my eyes, I crawl my hand over to the leather syringe pouch which I know is lying on the bed somewhere, so I can prepare the next dose, the only remedy to my condition.

“Looking for this, are we?”

Mycroft.

I didn’t hear him come in. I didn’t feel him take the pouch from inches away from me. I don’t know how long he’s been poised there. Yet none of this is surprising, I try to know as little as possible these days. And I used to put knowledge at such a premium. Funny.

I open my eyes a crack to look at him, looming over the bed. He’s wearing an expression of reproachful disapproval that I’m sure he’s learned from mummy.

“Sherlock, how long is this going to go on for?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea what you might be referring to.”

He sits down on the bed beside me, greying sheets cushioning his impact and my helpless, heavy limbs roll towards him slightly.

“I expected a mourning period, but this appears to have spiralled out of control. We imagined you would reach the other side under your own steam but now it has become clear that my intervention is necessary.”

“We?”

“Mummy’s awfully upset, you know.”

Of course, Mycroft has told her, of course he has. He’s frowning down at me. He never used to bother using his faked, facial expressions in my presence but maybe he’s starting to believe his own lies. He rests a hand on my shoulder. Probably to try and instil me with some sense of reassurance but it does the exact opposite.

“You told her? Why did you tell her, Mycroft?”

“This little pastime of yours is stopping. Now. It’s been 8 months.”

“I can’t.” Although that’s not the whole truth; what I really mean is ‘I can’t do it alone’. I’ve gone too far and I shouldn’t have to face it alone now. It’s not supposed to be like this. He’s supposed to be here, acting as a conduit between myself and humanity at large.

  
Now, there is no one to play the filter. I am alone.

“Get up. You’re staying in my spare room until it’s out of your system. You don’t have to do this on your own, Sherlock.”

“And you suddenly count as company, do you? I’ll be just fine here.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

He grabs the suitcase from on top of the wardrobe and starts filling it with the clothes strewn across the floor of the bedroom.

  
\----

  
It’s nearly our second anniversary and Mummy is insisting we pay a visit for the occasion. I couldn’t care less about where we spend one day out of countless days, but Victor feels somehow indebted to them so we’re driving back from Cambridge for a long weekend. I won’t miss anything of substance on Chemistry and Victor’s Classics course has scheduled this as their reading week, so the timing couldn’t be better.

I close my eyes in the passenger seat, propping my knees up on the dashboard, and listen to Victor singing along to half the words of the songs on the radio. I can tune out the sound of the radio itself, instead concentrating on his broken half lyrics and humming.

Before he came along, before that day he kissed me beside the flower beds in the garden, I could never have imagined the idea of needing another person. I never had to, as it wasn’t a changeable factor in my life. People made no effort to become close to me nor I to them. I had no need or reason for it, until him. No matter how many times I wrestle with the subject, I can’t quite figure out why things changed, some inexplicable combination of a thousand different variables, but they did.

Suddenly, things started to make more sense. Victor didn’t mind that I would try and figure out everything about him, because he would have told me what I wanted to know anyway. He would have told me, but he let me find out my own way. He showed an interest in my experiments and would listen, even if he didn’t understand. Where I passed my time day-by-day or week-by-week, he would make plans, plans that included not me or him, but us. He talked about the future in a way that made it seemed so easily attainable. He talked about our house in Highgate Village with the thatched roof and the garden, the two boys we would adopt and the big dog who would curl up on the sofa taking up all the room.

I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t see the future in such a linear fashion, I was always happy to go along with his vision. I didn’t need it though; I wouldn’t need any of it, just him. Anything else would be a bonus.

Rain starts hammering down on the roof of the car and I open my eyes with a start, ripped from whatever half sleep I’d lulled into. Victor looks over at me and smiles quickly before looking back to the road, puddles already beginning to form.

“Good morning, sleepy head.”

I smile and snake a hand up his arm. The contact is pleasant, warming to the touch, but I continue my way up and drag my fingers up the back of his neck, over his ear and back and forth across his perfect cheekbones; they lie perfectly parallel to his jaw and it’s the only evidence I’ve ever seen that could possibly point to Intelligent Design. He leans to kiss the palm of my hand without breaking his forward gaze. Coming out of a stop at a traffic light, he holds my wrist in place, kissing each of my finger tips in turn before the light flicks to green and he is starting the car into motion again.

Over the hammering of rain on the roof, a loud noise sounds from our right and before I’ve got any time to process what’s happening, there’s a sickening crush as the car implodes in on us. The car spins and collides into the embankment with the full force of not only our car, but the 4-wheel drive that is ploughing us along. The entire bonnet of the car is concertinaed inwards.

I look down and see my legs crushed under the dislodged dashboard and a slew of red covering my white shirt although I can’t feel any pain. Not yet anyway. I turn to see if Victor is alright and he seems to be leaning against the frame of the broken window. He’s covered in fragments of shattered glass which make him glitter through the blood seeping from somewhere near his right shoulder. And then the pain rises, like a wave crashing over me for the briefest of moments before my eyelids become incongruously heavy and I’m dragged into the darkness.

  
\----

  
“This will be your room.”

Mycroft puts the tote bag, full of haphazardly gathered belongings, onto the single bed in the sparsely decorated room. The room has been stocked with some essentials for what I’m sure will be a messy few weeks. There are tissues and a bottle of water on the dresser, along with a packet of over-the-counter pain killers and a small bottle of herbal sleep remedy; the room has an en suite (which I’m sure wasn’t there on my last visit. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Mycroft has had it installed especially) with a pile of white towels and a dressing gown, along with a pair of freshly pressed pyjamas.

“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call. A nurse will be here later to check on you.”

And with that, he is gone. The door clicks closed behind him and there is the heavy sound of a key turning in the lock. I suppose I should have predicted such actions.

Every muscle in my body is beginning to ache so I transfer the travel bag to the floor and drop onto the bed hearing a quiet groan of the springs in protest. On the bedside table is a satin, black gift box, dressed in an extravagant white bow. I run my fingers across the closest edges of the curious package before sitting up to pay closer attention. Mycroft hadn’t mentioned a gift.

I ease off the lid, only to be met by layers of white tissue paper which I carefully place on the bed. From the box, emerges a hard, oyster coloured dome with tiny darkened lines running across it like the path of a spider. I lift out the fragile dome and feel like I’ve been hit in the chest with brutal force.

Suddenly, Mycroft’s words make sense to me. He had said that I wouldn’t have to do this alone and he wasn’t talking about himself, he wasn’t talking about a hired nurse or even his assistant. He was talking about this.

I run my finger tips over the solid ridges of bone where the muscle and skin of cheeks would have rested, remembering our last contact that day, in the car. Perfect cheekbones, immortalised.

I rest my head back down on the bed, lying on my back with the skull sitting on my chest, touching every square millimetre of its bleached creaminess; the smoothed rounds of the eye sockets, the rows of regimented teeth with a single incisor at an angle to the rest, the slight dent in his jaw from an injury sustained playing hockey in his formative, teenage years. For months, I had refused to think about the prospect of a lifetime alone, spanning out ahead of me and now I no longer had to. My companion had been returned to me.

I’m shaking. I can’t tell whether it’s a result of the morphine beginning to leave my system or my overwhelming emotional strain of having a lost loved one return, it’s more likely a combination of both. I take four of the painkillers and two of the sleeping pills and lie on the bed in waiting. It’ll be here soon, the full force of the withdrawal; the shaking is just the first flickers of a smoke signal before the fire. Victor lies next to me, resting on my shoulder. Just like old times.

“You had no right to do it, you know, you had no right to leave me. It’s your fault that I can’t function alone anymore. When you came along, you broke something and I can’t fix it. I was fine before you; being alone was sanctity, I craved it and now it crushes me. I can feel it every day, biting at my skin and trying to swallow me whole.”

The room begins twisting slowly; it starts with a softening at the edges, before the walls lurch in one direction, then the other. I shut my eyes tightly and wring my hands into the bed linen to stay balanced through the sturm und drang. A warm pressure covers my hand and I open my eyes to see Victor opposite me on the bed. Our rocking platform stills, though the rest of the room is still swimming in sickening circles around us. I wrap my legs around his, threading an arm around his chest and tying our bodies together. He doesn’t have the same reassuring weight as before; nothing to hold me down, nothing to keep me grounded.

“I always wanted to see what you looked like on the inside, you know. Sometimes, when you were asleep, I’d imagine pushing my hands so hard into your chest that I could reach inside and lift out your heart to hold in my hands and feel it beat the life into your veins.”

He doesn’t say anything, blinking back at me from the other side of the pillow.

“If it had been anyone else, anyone at all, I wouldn’t have cared. I know you’re probably angry at me for saying that out loud, but that doesn’t stop me thinking it. There’s no one who I wouldn’t have swapped for you in that car.”

He maintains his stoic silence, instead shifting his body closer to mine. I lean my head forward and press my lips against his. It’s been so long, but it’s not the same.

The moment my lips touch his, the warm, inviting skin turns cold and hard beneath my searching mouth; my limbs find themselves twisted into the sheets and the hollow eyes of the skull stare at me from across the pillow. My cheeks are wet and stiff with tears, old and new.

  
\----

  
“So, this is all your...”

“Well, obviously I can straighten things up. A bit.”

As soon as attention is called to them, I notice that my possessions do seem somewhat haphazardly arranged around the flat. I collect together papers that have been blown across the floor from the open window and affix them to the mantelpiece with my old, engraved pocket blade.

He continues his appraisal of the flat around him, not yet entirely convinced of the idea of cohabitation either way. Lifting his cane, he points at Victor, sitting on his mantel viewing platform.

“That’s a skull.”

“A friend of mine.”

As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I regret them. A friend? After almost half a lifetime together, I don’t think the term friend really adequately describes the situation.

“Well, I say ‘friend’...”

  



End file.
